


The Hang of Thursdays

by MiraMira



Category: Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Aliens, Disguise, F/M, Gen, Groundhog Day, Innuendo, Spies & Secret Agents, Stealth Crossover, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5106293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/pseuds/MiraMira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something - or some<i>one</i> - wants Shayera reliving the same day over and over again.  Shayera is taking this about as well as expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hang of Thursdays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NancyBrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, NancyBrown! I'm not sure I've done your time loop idea the justice it deserves, but I hope the basic elements suit. ;)
> 
> Note: this story is set between "Wild Cards" and "Starcrossed," and contains spoilers for the latter episode.

The first of the Thursdays is so uneventful, Shayera almost starts forgetting it before it's even ended. Oh, there's a call for help – something to do with an unstable LexCorp serum and a monster destroying half of downtown Metropolis – but it's mopped up by mid-afternoon. This provides her with ample opportunity to compose, encrypt, and concoct an excuse for fiddling with one of the main computer terminals long enough to send her weekly report to Hro: full as usual of unimpressed assessments of Earth's readiness to withstand invasion, and professionally appropriate assurances of her eagerness to see him soon. 

The remainder of the evening is taken up by a leisurely dinner with John, followed by a far more energetic “dessert.” As his gentle snoring lulls her to sleep, her last conscious thought is a mingled sense of relief and regret that she is one day closer to a future in which she will no longer have to pretend her loyalties lie here.

\- - -

The second Thursday, Shayera spends in a cloud of confusion and deja vu from the moment she awakens in her own room, alone. At first, she thinks she's imagining the sameness of the conversations around the Watchtower, brushing off Diana's “What do you mean, we already set a time to spar next week?” and Flash's complaints that the mess hall is already out of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs again. Once J'onn summons them to the transporters with a quick briefing on the situation in Metropolis, though, she runs out of denials. Even Luthor isn't arrogant enough to order a second test immediately on the heels of such a disastrous first trial.

She resends her transmission to Thanagar without changes or references to a prior version, but declines John's dinner invitation in favor of an early bedtime. Maybe this has all been a long, boring lucid dream, and tomorrow will have better things in store.

It doesn't. Or rather, it might; apparently, she just isn't allowed to know. The nightmare continues.

\- - -

Shayera devotes the next several Thursdays to enlisting the Justice League's help.

They don't believe her the first time. She can't really blame them, especially when she breaks down in rage and frustration toward the end of her account, which only helps convince the others of Batman's theory that she's suffering from a concussion. If it were anyone else, she'd probably be the first to agree with him. She wastes another Thursday making a recording and keeping it on her person, hoping the combination of visual evidence and a calmer explanation from her will prove more persuasive. Alas, when she wakes up again, it's vanished as though it never existed – which, technically, it doesn't yet. 

By now, though, she's absorbed enough details of the day's battle to call out everything before it happens, including Flash's convoluted pun involving the Daily Planet building and gravitational pull. After that display, she has their unwavering assistance.

A long series of investigations carried out over the same four- to eight-hour period follows. They examine every inch of the Watchtower's tech, but apart from unusually high levels of tachyon activity, nothing appears out of place. The LexCorp serum proves a dead end, as do Diana's entreaties to the gods. Shayera spends several pleasant but fruitless afternoons informing Doctor Fate which magical explanations he's already ruled out, before he finally concludes that the solution must lie outside his domain. Reluctantly, she even allows J'onn to probe her mind in case the culprit has attempted to overwrite some crucial recollections, but the overlapping sets of memories just give him a headache.

Finally, there comes a Thursday where Shayera's rejoinder of “been there; tried that” to the latest round of brainstorming is met with nothing but awkward silence. They are, officially, all out of ideas.

“Thank you for your time,” she says at last, and struggles not to cry.

\- - -

When she wakes up on Thursday, her despair is gone, replaced by grim resolve: if she's going to free herself, she can't do it from Earth. Ignoring a host of cheerful “good morning”s as she passes, she makes straight for the hangar and commandeers one of the shuttlecraft, punching in the coordinates for Thanagar.

It doesn't take long for the League to come after her. A green streak blazes up alongside her, and John raps on the windshield. She banks sharply, forcing herself to block out the way his concerned expression turns to disbelief, then horror as she clips him again.

The cockpit's warning alarm sounds too late as something – or, more likely, a blue-and-red outfitted some _one_ – pulverizes her wing, sending the jet into a death spiral. As blackness overtakes her from a growing lack of oxygen, she finds herself wondering if she's been dead all along, and this is her punishment. Assuming Superman doesn't rescue her in time, she supposes she'll find out next Thursday.

\- - -

Shayera's lost track of what Thursday it is by the time she decides she no longer cares. If this is the only day the universe or whatever force has taken over control of her life will permit her to experience, she's going to make it a good one.

As it turns out, “a good one” involves persuading John to let the others handle the battle, and come sightseeing with her instead. Dinner that evening is in Gotham, though they still wind up returning to the Watchtower to close out the night after a brief, invigorating run-in with some would-be muggers. There is only the tiniest nagging feeling during quiet moments that she's forgetting something to mar her happiness.

She remembers it with a start in the waning moments of the day, just before sleep can carry her off completely: her report to Hro. Slipping out of bed, she makes her way to the control room. To her surprise, she finds it empty except for a lone technician, a lanky young man with squarish spectacles and a shock of spiky brown hair.

“Is everything all right?” she asks, trying not to sound overly anxious. “I have a private communication I need to send.”

“Could be a while, ma'am,” the technician tells her. His accent is a little startling; it's the sort of thing the Flash might describe as 'posh,' although she doesn't think it quite rises to the level of 'Snooty McFancy-Pants.' “Network's acting funny.”

Shayera frowns. “And they only sent you to fix it?”

“Middle of the night,” he shrugs. “Might as well go to bed yourself, ma'am. Unless the planet's about to be invaded, whatever it is'll keep 'til morning.”

Despite the guileless delivery of these words, her eyes narrow. “Let me try another terminal.”

The technician wheels, his stance deliberate and determined. As he points a thin metal rod with a glowing blue tip that she doesn't recognize as part of the standard maintenance kit at her, she questions her initial assessment of him as young. His eyes are the eyes of someone who has seen things it would take her uncountable Thursdays to experience. They are also deeply sorrowful. “And you were doing so well.”

He triggers the device, and her eardrums nearly burst from the high-frequency assault. Nonetheless, she struggles to her knees. “If you want to stop me, you're going to have to kill me.”

He blasts her again, this time fastening a set of heavy-duty handcuffs on her before she can recover and setting her mace carefully to one side. “I don't need to stop you. And I don't want to kill you. If it were that simple, I'd have preserved one of the iterations where it already happened.” Without so much as a pause in his chatter, he returns to his tinkering with the console. “I just need to delay you. A full twenty-four hours should be long enough to divert most of Thanagar's forces away on other priorities before they can be directed to Earth. I'd _hoped_ you might decide to abandon the mission on your own, but I suppose that will have to come in time.”

“Who are you?” she demands. “ _What_ are you? A Gordanian spy? Martian? Kryptonian? You can't be human.”

He doesn't even look up from his work. “I'm not sure what your people call me, to be honest. Does 'The Oncoming Storm' ring a bell?”

Shayera almost laughs. The Oncoming Storm is a legend, a thing to frighten fledglings and green cadets. Then she considers what she knows. Older than he looks. Unpredictable. Intimately familiar with the mechanics of time manipulation. Prefers nonviolent tactics, but won't hesitate to use them. And for all his power and technology and sheer force of will, bizarrely fixated on some small, backwater corner of the Milky Way.

“Yes,” she whispers, trembling. “I've heard of you.”

“Good.” He finishes his adjustments and then turns to face her, those ancient eyes burning like neutron stars. “I'm going to uncuff you now. You likely won't remember what's happened once the loop has fully resolved, or the details of this conversation. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, and all that. But if you remember one thing, remember this, and pass it along to your superiors: _this planet is protected_.”

\- - -

Friday, Shayera wakes up in John's arms with a pounding headache, weary down to her pinion feathers in a way that doesn't seem to square with yesterday's events. Unfortunately, the one thing she clearly remembers _not_ doing is sending her weekly report. Dragging herself away from John's mumbled protests, she gets up to reconstruct the message.

The wording comes to her easily, but as she goes over it in her head, something feels wrong. Perhaps she's being too flippant about her colleagues' capabilities. It isn't that she _wants_ the entire Thanagarian army descending on Earth – the idea fills her with dread she'd rather not analyze – but still, Hro deserves to know exactly what he's up against. And hopefully, if they can be made to see reason, the warriors Thanagar might one day be able to count as allies.

 _This planet is protected_ , she thinks, and begins to list the reasons. This is going to take her a while.


End file.
